[Robogineer1649]

There is not necessarily an universal answer that answers for every team how much of the robot should be mentor built and how much of it should be student built.

That being said i will explain our mentor/student philosophy and i will state that i am a very large advocate for student built robots halfway because this is how our team does it and halfway because I believe if it is a student built robot the students will learn a lot more than just watching the mentors. Additionally the reason i want to become a mechanical engineer and a roboticist is that i was able to build a robot and actually see the entire design process and participate in it starting from stating my strategy all the way to making the bumpers at the end of the season and mounting the electronics.

Team 1649's policy is that mentors are only there to guide and teach the students and answer questions. They are also there to make sure someone doesn't cut there hand off or something else that doesn't grow back. So basically mentors are there to make sure we don't kill each other or ourselves and teach us how to build the robot. This being said the mentors are not in a glass box and all they do is answer questions and then sit back down. Normally the mentors are there and will answer any question you have but they also move around to the different projects we are working on and they will advocate safety or ask questions and suggest ways to do something better. Also the mentors will voice their opinions and tell us when where not doing something right or suggest a way to do it better but the students are still the ones building the actual robot. This is our team philosophy and our main mentor follows this team philosophy very closely with the only exceptions to this being a alumni mentor teaching us how to do CAD while cadding components for this year's robot.

The last thing i want to say is that this is our team philosophy and i just wanted to share it and it may work very well on our team but it may not work for other teams. Such as teams where the machining tools can only be used by mentors or chaperones.